For Love of Transporters
by Ellipsis the Great
Summary: In which a transporter accident is the best thing that ever happened. Ever. For a prompt at the st xi kink meme on livejournal. Bones-centric.


_**For Love of Transporters**_

_A one-shot by Ellipsis the Great_

_**Summary:**__ In which a transporter accident is the best thing that ever happened. Ever. For a prompt at the st_xi_kink_meme on livejournal._

_**Rating: **__T for language._

_**Disclaimer: **__I don't own Star Trek in any of its forms. Just the plot._

"You better believe there will be times in your life when you'll be feeling like a stumbling fool. So take it from me: you'll learn more from your accident than anything that you could ever learn in school." –Billy Joel

There is a teenager standing on the platform in the transporter room. He looks about as confused as the bridge crew of the _Enterprise_ feels, his brown eyes wide, his suntanned body straining against the fabric of his ratty t-shirt and jeans. He reaches up, runs a hand through his hair, and smiles uneasily at them.

"Um, hey there, y'all." It shouldn't be possible for four words to display such a thick accent, but apparently it is.

"Hi." Jim says weakly.

"I'm Horatio—I mean, Len—er, Leonard." The teen somehow manages to say around his nervous stutters. They can see a blush creeping steadily up the back of his neck. "McCoy. I'm Leonard McCoy. But, um, most people call me Horatio. It's my middle name. I prefer Leonard, though, unless you're gonna start calling me Len or Lenny or something. Because if you are I'd prefer Horatio." The blush quickly reaches his hairline and starts moving toward the tips of his ears. "I'm babbling. Sorry. I do that when I'm nervous. Which is a lot. So I, um, tend to babble a lot."

"Captain, the doctor seems to have been de-aged due to some sort of transporter malfunction." Spock says. "He looks to be somewhere around the same age as Ensign Chekov."

"I'm sixteen." Leonard supplies.

"Well." Jim says, and clears his throat. "Welcome aboard the USS _Enterprise_, Leonard. I'm Captain James T. Kirk."

Leonard blinks, then scowls. "Now look here, mister; I might be some stupid country hick but even I know James T. Kirk is three years younger than me. I don't live _that_ far into the middle of Bumfuck." His flush, if it was possible, darkens as his eyes dart over to Uhura and he says, "If you'll, ah, pardon the expression, ma'am."

"I'm a linguistics officer." She says. "I've heard far worse expressions, trust me. I'm Lieutenant Nyota Uhura, by the way, and the thing is…Leonard, you're supposed to be thirty years old, not sixteen."

One eyebrow arches. "You yankin' my chain, ma'am?"

She laughs. "No, Leonard, I'm perfectly serious. You're the CMO of the _Enterprise_."

This time when his flush darkens, it is obviously from anger, his jaw setting in a stubborn way that they recognize immediately. "Alright, _ma'am_, if y'all have _quite_ had your fun." He says.

"What do you mean?" Uhura asks, surprised.

"I'm a farmer, lady, not some fancy-pants doctor." He says. "My dad's a farmer, and his dad's a farmer, and every other McCoy back to before replicators came along and screwed with our market value's been a farmer, too. I dropped outta high school, for Christ's sake, and now you wanna try tellin' me my family, what, sold the farm and their home and the good Lord only knows what else to send me off to medical school? Now, I might not be the smartest guy around, and I might be some backwoods redneck who ain't got two pennies to rub together most times, but I've got an awful lot o' pride in what I do, and in the GED that's hangin' up in my room because I worked two part-time jobs durin' the off-season to pay for the extra schoolin'. So…so _fuck_ you and the hoity-toity little starship you rode in on."

Then, before they can quite react, he has all but jumped off of the pad and out the door, looking both ways with a frustrated, slightly dazed expression before he picks a direction seemingly at random and continues storming off.

"No, wait. Leonard!" Jim yells, following after him as the rest of the bridge crew look at each other with wide eyes and wonder why no one had ever thought to tell them that Leonard hadn't always been a doctor—hadn't always _wanted_ to be a doctor.

They follow the shouts that mark Jim and Leonard's argument, and come in just in time to hear Jim yell, "Don't you want to _do_ something with your life?"

And then Leonard reels back, balls a hand up into a fist, and punches Jim hard enough to send him crashing into the wall. Scotty and Spock rush forward, Spock helping Jim up and Scotty holding Leonard back from where he is trying to continue his assault.

"_Fuck_ you, asshole!" Leonard snarls. "I might not get to ride around the universe in some glorified tin can, but what I do is just as fucking important as what you do, you self-righteous son of a bitch!"

"Everyone calm down!" Sulu says, with that authoritative voice that people never quite expect from the laid back Californian but listen to nonetheless. He turns to Leonard, who has gone stiff in Scotty's arms but isn't struggling anymore. "Look, Leonard, I swear we aren't trying to pull one over on you. Here, look." He gets out his PADD and pulls up Dr. McCoy's file and picture, then shows it to Leonard. "That's you as you're supposed to be. Thirty years old, divorced, and CMO of the _Enterprise_."

Leonard stares at the picture for a long time, eyebrows drawing close together. Then his eyes flicker over to the other side of the PADD, which entails all of his accomplishments and stats. He blinks hard, his jaw tightening. Looking like he's just eaten something foul, he holds the PADD back toward Sulu.

"What…what's it say?" He asks, his voice soft.

"What do you mean, what's it say?" Jim asks as Sulu takes the PADD back with an upraised brow. "You can read it, can't you?"

"_No_, I _can't_." Leonard grits out. He crosses his arms over his chest and looks away from them. "I'm dyslexic, so…I have a hard time…I mean, it's bad enough tryin' to read stuff on paper. Near impossible on screens. The…the words float and the letters mix around, and I…I didn't just drop outta school for shits and giggles, y'know? No way I coulda finished. Ain't got the money to get the dyslexia fixed and…and don't nobody have good programs for kids with learnin' disabilities, nowadays. Especially not in Thompson, Georgia." He reaches up and knocks his head with his knuckles, giving them a weak smile. "I'm stupid as sin."

"No. No, Leonard, you aren't stupid." Uhura says, putting a hesitant arm around his shoulders. "Just because you have a disability…"

"Don't patronize me, ma'am." Leonard says, shrugging her off. "I know what I am, and I know what I ain't. What I am is a poor farmer kid and what I ain't is some hotshot doctor, okay? Nice words are all well and good, but there comes a time when a man's gotta be sensible and quit dreamin' about things that ain't never gonna happen."

"You're using a lot of big words for someone who claims to be a no-account hick." Uhura says.

He shuffles his feet and looks down with a shrug. "Dunno what they all mean. But I hear other people use 'em, and I can guess well enough."

"Which is a lot more than most hicks can do." She insists. "I'm telling you, Leonard: you're smart. You just have a disability that stops you from living up to your potential."

He shakes his head and sighs. "You don't seem to understand, ma'am. Now, it don't matter how smart I am or ain't. I'm a drop-out. A farmer. My grades in high school were shit—I barely got the GED even with a tutor I could hardly afford and Mama writin' down what I told her for papers. And that's _okay_."

"No. It's not." Jim says.

"It _is_…um, sir." Leonard says. "Maybe it ain't the…the preferable outcome of things, but I'm alive and I'll scrape by in life. And…and if I play my cards right, save up my money and all…my young'uns can do what I couldn't, y'know?" He looks at Sulu; or rather, at the PADD Sulu is holding. "This doctor of yorn…I'm sure he's a good guy. Smart and all. And maybe he's me, but he ain't _me_. Maybe whatever brought me here…grabbed me outta some alternate world, or something. But our face and name's the only things we've got in common."

"No." Spock finally speaks up. "The likelihood of you having been taken from an alternate universe is less than point zero nine percent. And, in fact, it is far more likely—fifty-seven point three percent—that you were actually made younger, not 'grabbed' out of anywhere."

Leonard shakes his head. "Well, y'all can believe what you want. I'm just tellin' you what I reckon's goin' on, here."

"Well, I reckon you're wrong." Jim says.

"Look, Leonard, why don't we…I mean, what if we fixed your dyslexia for you?" Sulu asks, and then (seeing the stubborn, indignant glint that enters Leonard's eyes) adds, "We'll call it a loan, or something. And when you grow up and become our CMO again, you can repay us by being a damned good one."

Leonard purses his lips together. They can practically _see_ the argument raging in his head—fierce pride versus raw desire.

"Fine." He says finally. "But I'll pay you back in_ credits_. And don't go tryin' to talk me out of it once things are over and done with, neither. I don't take charity."

"Of course not." Uhura says, and forces her face to stay carefully blank when Leonard turns a sharp glare on her. "Let's go down to Medical and talk to M'Benga."

Leonard reels back. "You…you mean _now_?" He asks, blanching.

"And why not now?" Jim asks.

"I thought…I mean…ain't this a little too soon?" Leonard asks, digging his heels in a bit as Jim and Sulu start pushing him towards the sick bay. "I figured I'd have a little more time to…uh, get used to the idea?"

"You mean talk yourself and us out of it." Uhura says.

"No, I mean get used to the idea." Leonard insists. "Er, well, not the idea, exactly, but…I ain't too fond of doctors, ma'am. They give me the heebie-jeebies."

"Oh, really?" Sulu asks.

"Yeah. I mean, they're, uh, so…what's the word? Clinical? Detached? Something like that. I can't but hardly understand a word that comes out of their mouth." He says, walking on his own, now, but still being carefully steered by the two men on either side of him. "Like…my mom? Went to the doctor last week with a cold—a plain ol' common cold, mind you—and he says she's got a friggin' 'upper respiratory tract infection.' Who talks like that? Just tell the poor woman she's got a cold. Ain't no sense in talking like some sort of text book; it just makes you sound like a pretentious jackass and the person you're talking to feel like an idiot."

Somehow, that makes a strange sort of sense given Bones' usually deplorable bedside manner.

"You still have to go." Uhura says. "We'll take you to Christine Chapel. She's a nurse, and she pretty much always tells it how it is."

"Um…well, alright, I guess." He says uncertainly, allowing them to lead (read: drag) him into the sick bay.

Christine looks up at them from her paperwork, one eyebrow arching upwards. "And who is this?"

"M-McCoy, ma'am." Leonard says. "Leonard McCoy."

She frowns at him, looking at Jim for an explanation.

"Transporter accident." Jim shrugs helplessly. "He's sixteen."

"Ah. Well, I'll just do a quick scan, shall I?" She asks, grabbing a tricorder. "I'm Christine, by the way. Christine Chapel."

"It's a pleasure to meet you, ma'am." Leonard says, only his lips moving as he carefully holds still, watching the tricorder with some amount of distrust.

"Are you on meds?" She asks, scowling down at the screen.

Leonard blinks. "No…why?"

"Not even for your dyslexia?" She asks.

"My folks can't afford—"

"Bullshit."

He jumps a little at the interruption, eyes wide. "Pardon me?"

"I said bullshit. Maybe you can't afford the treatment, but you should be able to afford the medication."

"Well, I can't."

"Why?" She asks. "What are your parents paying for that's more important than their only son being able to read?"

"My family is made up of _farmers_, lady." He snaps. "We gotta pay for parts to fix our piece of shit tractor, and for seed to plant our crops, and for the upkeep of the animals and the house and the fields, and for farmhands because our fool of a local doctor screwed up my mother's womb doin' a C-section to try an' save my twin brother—who, by the way, ended up dying anyway because the doctor couldn't be bothered keeping his equipment anywhere near up to date. Then there's the money that goes into transporting our crops to the market, and _then_ we gotta pay to get rid of what we can't sell. So, what, you think they're gonna use up all of their savings paying for their useless son's medication? Hell no, lady, because our savings have to be kept for the years when the crops don't come in thanks to plagues and pestilence. Besides, I ain't gotta be able to read to work the land; I just gotta have two legs and a strong pair of hands, which I've got."

Agitated, he runs a hand through his hair, pursing his lips together and looking away. "Look, are you…are you gonna do the da—the surgery, or not?"

"I just want to understand, Leonard." She says.

"I'm the one who didn't die." He says. "That's all there is to understand."

"No, Leonard…" She says.

"God…just screw it." He says, jumping down off of the bed and starting towards the door. "You guys aren't psychologists, alright? You," he points at Chapel, "are a nurse, and you," turning his gaze to Uhura, "are a communications officer, and the rest of you," he throws his hands up into the air exasperatedly, "are whatever else you are."

He turns to leave, which is when Chapel jabs a hypo into his neck and pulls the trigger.

As the world is going black, he's pretty sure he hears Chapel say, "I have _always_ wanted to do that."

(I'MADOCTOR,NOTAPAGEBREAK)

Leonard wakes up with a sudden jolt, eyes flying open, but everything is dark. For a moment he's afraid that he's gone blind, but then he realizes that there are bandaged covering his eyes.

"Oh, good. You're awake." It's Chapel's voice, and his head swivels around to face her even though he can't see her what with the bandages and all. "We can take those bandages off. The sedative lasted a little longer than I thought it would, and with the regenerator your eyes should be all healed up by now."

"Okay." He says, feeling a little float-y, like maybe the sedatives _haven't_ quite worn off, yet. "I'm, er, sorry about earlier. It was awful rude of me to snap at you like that."

"We all have buttons, Leonard." She says, patting his head distractedly just before she grabs it to hold him still and begins untying the bandages. "I just pushed the wrong ones."

"I shouldn't have lost my temper." He says.

She laughs. "I'm used to it, trust me. You—I mean, my CMO isn't exactly the most well-mannered guy around."

He winces, blinking rapidly as the light shines into his eyes. "There ain't no reason to be rude to a lady."

"I don't mind." She says. "He's the best doctor I've ever worked with, and it's not like he's malicious about it. He just tells it like it is, no holds barred. There's not a person onboard who doesn't respect him for that."

He smiles a little. "I guess."

"I know." She says, and hands him a PADD. "Read this."

He takes it, looking down. For a moment, his vision is fuzzy, but it quickly clears. And he stares down at the PADD, waiting for the words to start jumping off of the screen and scrambling around like they usually do, but…they don't.

"Tell me what it says." Chapel says.

"Keep the patient away from bright light for a day following the procedure." He reads slowly, eyes going wider and wider with each perfectly clear word. "If bright light cannot be avoided, the patient should wear a light dimming device, such as sunglasses. Bed rest is suggested, but not necessary. After twenty-four hours, the patient should be finished with any and all side effects of the procedure, including but not limited to…"

"That's enough." She says, putting a hand on his shoulder.

"I can…I can read." He says hoarsely, his throat tightening, his hands shaking. "Nurse Chapel, I…I've never…this is the first time I…"

Her hand on his shoulder squeezes gently.

And he turns and throws his arms around her and starts crying—for God's sake, _crying_—because he's so happy his brain has gone blank and his body can't think of any other way to express it.

Chapel just hugs him back with a low chuckle.

And he realizes, right then, like a flash of lightning, that _this_ is what he wants to do. He wants to live up to whatever legend these people have built out of him—the best damn doctor around, who doesn't bother beating around the bush or making things sound nice just to stop from hurting people's feelings, who everyone comes to because they know he'll do his damnedest to take care of them even if he's rough around the edges. Maybe not a CMO; fixing a person's dyslexia doesn't suddenly make them capable of reaching that far. But he can be a small town country doctor.

He pulls back, sniffling loudly and wiping his eyes on his sleeve. "Sorry. I mean, thanks. I mean…" He shakes his head with a laugh. "You can't know how much this means to me."

"Mhm." She says, agreeing but obviously _not_ agreeing at all, and hands him a pair of sleek sunglasses that she must have stolen from Jim, or something, because they definitely aren't any sort of regulation. "You read the rules: keep these on for the next twenty-four hours, just in case. If you get any headaches or double vision or anything else that seems strange, come talk to me immediately, okay?"

He nods, looking back at the PADD he'd dropped on the bed when he hugged her. "Can I…borrow that, please? Is there other stuff on there that I could—"

"That PADD's for you to keep." She says. "It's got some medical stuff I think you might be interested in reading, and some regular novels and such. And…I downloaded a dictionary, too, so you can look up any confusing bits of medical jargon."

Another nod, this one accompanied by a wide smile. "It's alright, Miss Chapel. I know I don't talk too good. But I'll learn." A pause. "I mean, I'll probably never talk real smart—not like that Spock guy or nothin'—but I won't talk like this no more."

She laughs and ruffles his hair. "_Any_ more."

"_Any_ more." He repeats, looking back down at the PADD. "Is it okay…I mean, would you mind if I read out loud?"

"I've got paperwork to do." She says. "But if you don't mind a less-than-completely-captivated audience, then go for it."

He nods, leans back in the bed, and begins to read.

(I'MADOCTOR,NOTAPAGEBREAK)

Over the course of the next week, it becomes completely commonplace for people to stumble upon Leonard reading all over the ship.

He reads in the cafeteria, in the rec rooms, in the observatory (although they do notice that he stays far away from the window and close to a trash can), and once in the Jeffries Tubes because the sound of the engines reminded him of the farm—more than anywhere else on the ship, anyhow.

If he isn't reading, he's talking to someone. He talks to Chapel and sometimes Spock (who he seems a little uncomfortable around for reasons that they chalk up to him not being able to stand the man regardless of his age) about the medical journals he's been reading. He and Chekov bond over being teenagers, discuss some of the fictional books he's reading, and even trade porn secrets. He tries to learn from Uhura how to speak properly with varying degrees of success. He acts as a completely objective sounding board for Jim's crazy schemes (which isn't all that different from how he and Jim interact when he's his normal age, actually). He and Scotty get drunk together (also not unusual, although Scotty realizes at some point that the good doctor actually _isn't_ of age, at the moment, and he really shouldn't be giving him liquor; not that that stops him for long, of course).

And, oddly enough, he helps Sulu out with his plants. He knows a surprising amount about plants (well, maybe not so surprising), although he doesn't take the same pure joy from cultivating them that Sulu does. Considering his tendency for bitching about the farm, people find it quite odd that he would hang out in a place that's about as close to a farm as a place can get on a flagship. Then Janice Rand overhears them having a conversation that essentially consists of them complaining about how hard it is to keep up with the rest of the crew, sometimes, and how they wish they were just a little bit smarter so maybe they could comprehend the sheer amount of knowledge their crewmates seem to hold over such a vastly diverse number of subjects. Everyone understands a little bit better, then, although they know better than to say anything about it to either Leonard or Sulu.

At the end of the week, when Scotty announces that he's figured out what the glitch in the transporter is and how to fix it, they almost wish he had taken a little bit longer.

Almost.

(I'MADOCTOR,NOTAPAGEBREAK)

Leonard—their Leonard; their Bones—is standing on the transporter pad with a very familiar and surprisingly welcome scowl on his face. He's wearing a red and black checkered flannel shirt that looks like it has probably seen better days, and an old pair of jeans that definitely has. And he's tanner than they remember.

He blinks and looks around the room for a moment, and then a smile tugs at the edges of his lips.

"I was wonderin' when you'd get off yer lazy asses and bring me back." He says; his drawl is thicker than it's ever been before. "Was startin' to think you didn't want the old me, anymore."

"You were bound to age back up, eventually." Jim says, clapping the CMO on the shoulder as he climbs down off of the pad.

Bones arches an eyebrow at him. "Age back up?"

"Well, yeah. You got younger, and now—"

"No, I didn't get younger." Bones says. There's a rather impish glint in his hazel eyes that they aren't used to in his older, more mature self (although his younger self had been given to playing little jokes every now and then). "You switched us. I went back to 2243, and he came forward to now."

"No way." Jim says. "Spock said it wasn't…I mean, no fucking way."

"When I was sixteen, I ran away from home." Bones says. "At least, that's what it says in my file. I was gone for a week, and when I came back I suddenly wasn't dyslexic, anymore. People figured I'd run off and gotten some back alley doctor to operate. I didn't tell anybody what had really happened, of course; they'd never have believed me and I would probably have ended up in an insane asylum. But I did tell my folks that I wanted to become a doctor; they never understood it, but they did everything they could to put me through school. I just finished paying off my student loans a few years back."

"Holy shit." Chapel says.

"I opened a private practice after graduation; never used medical jargon if I could help it, and never charged more than a person could pay. After the divorce it went under—people liked me, but in a small town a little thing like that can do a lot of damage—so I sold the building and used that money to go to Iowa. I still couldn't tell you why I went to Iowa, exactly, but one day I was in a bar, and who should I see but Jim and Uhura?" He chuckles and shakes his head. "By then I'd half-convinced myself it was some weird dream, or something, but that…as far as I was concerned, that was like God tellin' me to go for it. So I joined Starfleet, and here I am."

"Holy_ fucking _shit." Chapel says.

Other than that, people were quiet for a long time, trying to process everything.

Then, Jim shook his head and sighed.

"Bones, I'm pretty sure this means you aren't allowed to hate transporters, anymore."

The End.

_A/N: So, all you lovers of time paradoxes and such: which came first? The doctor, or the transporter accident? Cue Twilight Zone music, please._

_I don't know that this is what anon wanted…I tried to hit all of the bases, but honestly it kind of flew away from me and got ridiculously long, and after a while I just went with it. \o/_

_Hope you enjoyed it! See ya next!_

_-EtheG_


End file.
